You make a good point about the almost self-fulfilling demagoguery of some of the anti-Islamist activists. One of the difficulties in following this area, however, is that organizations like the SPLC are often guilty in pursuit of their political agenda of the very practice of over-generalizing of which they accuse their opponents. For example, in the piece to which you linked, the SPLC makes good points about certain anti-Islamist activists who treat all Muslims as though they agree with the Islamist interpretation of Islam, and thereby give support to the Islamist viewpoint. SPLC proceeds, however, to lump Daniel Pipes into the same category as Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller as among “eight central activists … on almost every aspect of the recent surge in anti-Muslim fervor in America.” I have been a regular reader of Dr. Pipes’ scholarly work and his editorial writings for many years and, while I do not always agree with his prescriptions, he has nevertheless repeatedly and explicitly made a distinction between Islamism and Islam. He has written often that the solution for Islamism is within Islam itself and, specifically, that “radical Islam is the problem, moderate Islam is the solution.” (See, for example, the bibliography of Dr. Pipes’ writings at : danielpipes.org). Indeed, the SPLC has elsewhere acknowledged that Dr. Pipes’ views of Muslims are more moderate than the others with which they lump him in the report to which you linked. (splcenter.org). If they want to have greater credibility in this important debate, SPLC and others holding similar political viewpoints need to avoid painting with the same broad brush that they accuse their political opponents of using. Otherwise, conservatives will simply write off anything coming from SPLC on the subject as being motivated by the organization’s politically liberal viewpoint rather than by a desire to honestly address the problematic link between opposition to radical Islamism and anti-Muslim bigotry.